Life Cycle Assessment Methodology Of Original Manufacturing And Remanufacturing Of An Engine

Nowadays, natural resources depletion and environmental degradation has become the hot issue, the companies are using pollution prevention strategies and environmental management systems to evaluate the effect on environment of their daily activities. Product life cycle assessment (LCA) can assess the accumulative environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of the product and is widely applied by the companies.This paper relies on the national "973" programme "Basic Scientific Problems of the Mechanical Equipment Remanufacturing" which is collaborated with an engine original manufacturer in China, conducted a comparative life cycle assessment of an original manufactured diesel engine with a remanufactured counterpart based on E-Balance software, evaluate the raw materials, resources and energy consumption and environmental emissions, put forward the calculation method of the average environmental impact indicator of the engine life cycle and evaluate the optical time for the diesel engine remanufacturing. Details are as follows:(1) Conduct a comparative life cycle assessment of an original manufactured diesel engine with a remanufactured counterpart based on E-Balance software from the factory practical investigation; identify the major environmental impacts and the life cycle stages which bring about the most serious environmental impact, the improvement suggestions are put forward in the end.(2) Build the life cycle assessment methodology model with matrix LCA method by defining the process vectors and process matrix.(3) Calculate the life cycle impacts of engine remanufacturing B1, B2, B3, B4of the different remanufacturing time t1, t2, t3, t4, combined with the environmental impact indicator of original engine manufacturing A0to calculate the average environmental impact indicator of the engine life cycle Fi, conduct the fitting process with the Fi curve, then the lowest point of the fitting curve is the theoretical optical remanufacturing time with the minimum environmental impact.It can be found from the LCA results of the original manufacturing and remanufacturing of the diesel engine that compared to original manufacturing, remanufacturing has a notable advantages from the aspects of energy saving and environmental emissions reduction; specific speaking, PED, GWP, AP, EP, ODP, POCP can be reduced by75.28%,71.32%,33.61%,64.11%,56.79%, and18.28%respectively.The theoretical optical remanufacturing time is obtained by fitting the average value of the environmental impact indicator, which indicates that we need remanufacture the engine after4.047years of usage to realize the minimum environmental impact.